And the perfectly fair question that arises from that theory is
whether the "little or nothing" value that Romney attributed to
the investments when he contributed them was actually a fair
valuation--or whether Romney low-balled the value to dodge some
taxes.

The only way to answer that question is to know the specific
investments and analyze them.

But since Romney's IRA investments are disguised via a byzantine
series of offshore entities designed at least in part to minimize
US taxes, it is impossible to do this analysis without having
access to his returns.

(This is one reason why it's
so important for Romney to release his returns--so the public
can understand the truth about Romney's finances, as well as the
reality of tax laws that allow super-rich Americans to take
advantage of sophisticated loopholes that most Americans, for all
practical purposes can't.)

Romney first made this claim when he was running for Governor of
Massachusetts--as a way of dodging blame for some layoffs that
occurred at one of Bain's investments. And Romney has repeated
this claim ever since.

But now
Callum Borchers and Christopher Roland of the Globe have
discovered that Bain Capital paid Romney a salary for several
years after he says he left and also stated in SEC filings that Romney 'remained the firm’s
'sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive
officer, and president' in those years.

SEC filings, needless to say, are serious business. If Romney was
actually not associated with Bain when Bain was saying he was the
"Chairman, CEO, and President," Bain may well have committed
fraud (and if Romney knew about it and didn't correct it, he also
might have committed fraud).

Meanwhile, if Bain's filings were correct, Romney's repeated
claims that he left three years earlier than he did will be a
huge blow to his credibility.

So this issue is potentially a huge deal. And the Romney campaign
hasn't even begun to address or explain it in a satisfactory way.

Buried in the SEC filings that the Boston Globe unearthed,
however, may be a clue as to how Romney got so rich and
accumulated so much money in his IRA.

The filings said that Romney was the "sole shareholder" of Bain
Capital in the 1999-2002 period, more than 15 years after Bain
Capital was founded.

If this is true, it is very startling, and it raises a host of
additional questions:

Why would Romney be the sole shareholder of a firm launched
within Bain Consulting? Wouldn't Bain want to own a piece of
it?

Why did Romney get 100% ownership of the firm?

Weren't there any other partners added along the way?

Etc.

This is also probably part of the explanation about how Romney
got so rich so fast: If he was the sole shareholder of Bain
Capital 15+ years after its founding, this would be like Steve Schwarzman being the sole
shareholder of The Blackstone Group, a private-equity firm he
co-founded and runs. The Blackstone Group trades publicly and is
worth more than $6 billion (and has thousands of shareholders in
addition to Mr. Schwarzman). So unless Mitt Romney sold out of a lot of his stake in
Bain, it would be conceivable that he could be worth a great deal
more than the $250 million most people think he is worth.

(Bain isn't public, so we can't assess its financials. But it's a
big, successful private equity firm, so it is presumably worth a
lot.)

Lastly, these filings may explain how Romney could
legitimately have accumulated so much money in his IRA.

If Romney was given 100% of the stock of Bain Capital when it was
started, he might well have stashed some of these shares in his
IRA. At that moment, when Bain Capital was little more than a
document of incorporation, the shares would have been worth
basically zero. So Romney could have perfectly legitimately
stuffed a big percentage of the stock of Bain Capital in his IRA
and still not exceeded the $2,000 annual donation limit.

And then, over the ensuing years, the value of that stock would
have exploded as Bain became a highly successful private-equity
firm.

Importantly, if THIS is how Romney's IRA came to be worth so
much, it would be perfectly legitimate. Romney would not have had
to lowball the value of any investments, or generate miraculous
rates of return on his later Bain investments. He would merely
have had to have built a successful company, which he did.

If this is the answer on the IRA, it will begin to answer one of
the many questions around Romney's finances.

It won't save him from the potential fraud or from the credibilty
blow of having claimed to have left Bain before he did.

But it might at least provide a compelling and legitimate
explaination for one of the Romney money mysteries.